Baby Daddy
by glanmire
Summary: Post-DOFP Mystique turns up at the Xavier mansion in labour. The question of the night is - who's the father? Same verse as 'Daddy Issues' and 'Murdering Charles Xavier."
1. Chapter 1

I.

Hank is making hot chocolate - a particular guilty pleasure of his - when there's a repeated, forceful knock on the door. A visitor, at 11pm? Seems a little ominous. He looks outside the window. Rain is lashing down, and although it creates suitable pathetic fallacy, Hank has to worry because that's a sign that Ororo has wet the bed again, and although his heart goes out to the kid, it really does, he doesn't feel like changing urine-soaked sheets either.

_KNOCK KNOCK. _Whoever it is, they're very impatient. Hank would presume it's Magneto if not for the fact that Magneto would just levitate up and into an open window, and not bother to knock. He's considerate like that.

Hank carefully puts aside his mug and trots downstairs. He's halfway down the aforementioned stairs when Charles sends him a mental thought.

_If you could hurry Hank. _

Well that's not terrifying at all. Charles clearly telepathically knows who's outside, and that's great and all, but did he have to be so cryptic?

Hank hurls himself down the last couple of steps and half-flings the door open, fearing the worst.

There's a woman at the door. She's blue, naked, drenched, and unmistakably pregnant.

"Hey Hank. Did you miss me?" Raven asks, and then she's sagging and Hank is darting forward and he's catching her in his blue, hairy arms.

"Thanks," she mutters, looking away.

"C'mon, let's get you inside," he replies.

"Hank?" she asks as he half-carries her across the threshold - that could have meant something, once, but he pushes that thought away - "You're a doctor, right?"

"I have a doctorate," Hank says, deathly afraid of what she's going to say next.

"Have you ever delivered a baby?" she asks, gesturing towards her beach-ball sized blue-sky belly.

Hank has never in fact delivered a baby, and even if he had, he's sure that this particular birth is going to be a touch unusual, considering the mother involved.

It looks like he's not going to get to drink that hot chocolate after all.

II.

They've all gathered in the infirmary. Charles is rolling his wheelchair back and forth - his own form of nervous pacing.

"We can get you to a hospital Raven. There's an exceptionally fast mutant here-"

"And what, he's going to sling me over his back and carry me there? No thanks."

"Raven-"

"Charles, it's _Mystique, _and this was my house too you know. I'm happy doing this here. Leave it be."

Charles nods and turns to Alex. "Could you wake up Pietro and ask him to fetch Erik?"

"I don't care how stressed you are Charles, this is not the time for a game of chess!" Mystique half-screams through clenched teeth.

"Oh no, I just presumed that you would want the father present…?"

Mystique's yellow-eyed glare is chilling. "Who the hell said anything about Magneto being the father?"

Charles feels immediately abashed. "No one. My apologies."

She stares at him for another long moment, and then clenches her knuckles. More contractions. Lovely.

Charles had hoped for their big reunion to be decidedly less tense than this, but he'll make do with what he has.

III.

Pietro can't help but hearing. Everyone in the house just has these massive dramas, and they always expect the students to sleep through it, as if there wasn't a blue lady giving birth upstairs.

Plus Pietro is pretty sure it's the same blue woman who shot his dad in the neck last year. That's like, added drama, surely.

He contemplates his cellphone. Erik had given it to him for his birthday, so he could call him whenever he was off on one of those terrorist missions, which was kind of thoughtful. Pietro's never used it before but hey, first time for everything. He keys in the numbers that Erik elegantly scrawled onto the back of the phone on a sticky note, and waits.

"Pietro, now is not a good time," Erik says, predictably, answering on the first ring.

"Yeah fine," Pietro says tiredly, "but there's a blue woman giving birth upstairs and I thought you'd want to know."

"Mystique?" Erik says, and then, "Right. Can you pick me up?"

"Depends where you are. Like if you're in Europe or whatever, then no. I'm not Jesus, I can't run across water."

Erik sighs and gives him the address. It's not too far, couple of hundred miles. Pietro throws on a jacket and heads out. Normally Hank or Alex stop people sneaking out, but he guesses that they're a little preoccupied tonight.

The journey to get his dad will be easy. Bringing Magneto _back _on the other hand is going to be killer. The guy had nearly collapsed in the Pentagon after only a few feet of going Pietro-speed.

He must really care about the blue lady.

IV.

Erik and Pietro enter the infirmary some time later, Erik looking like he's going to get violently sick. Hank doesn't question it. There's bigger things happening.

Mystique grunts again, and the head is now actually coming out. Hank feels traumatised and _violated_ somehow but they're almost there, it's nearly over.

"The head is blue," Alex says calmly from behind him. Alex has dealt with all of this much better than Hank has. He said he'd seen worse in the Army. Hank didn't want to think about what that meant too much.

"The head is blue?" Charles repeats.

"Like me," Mystique sighs happily.

"Also like Hank," Pietro points out, not at all helpfully. "Are you the baby daddy Hank?"

"No, myself and Mystique never-"

"GRNNGH," Mystique cries, and they all shut up. Hank holds the distinctly blue head in his paws and urges Mystique on.

"Ahhh," she says after a moment. "Hank, are you sure about that?"

"About what?" he replies distractedly. "You don't mean- you and me- this is my baby?"

So it's his. No, it's not an 'it', the baby, the baby is his. Okay. Well he was present at the birth, that's a start-

"I'm only fucking with you Hank, it's not yours," Mystique says, somehow smiling despite being in labour, and then she's crying out and pushing again and Charles is gripping her hand so tight Hank fears he could break it, and then- then it's all over, just like that.

"Let me see it," Mystique commands instantly.

"It's a boy," Alex declares to the room at large.

"Really?" Mystique asks. "Give him to me."

"You gotta wait until it's cleaned up," Pietro says, and hands a bunch of towels to Hank.

The baby has a tail. Hank tries to process this information but it's too much so he just ignores it. The baby is otherwise _adorable, _a chubby blue little thing, but the tail is too much, babies don't have tails.

"Who even are you?" Mystique asks Pietro weakly, though Hank barely hears her. He's still thinking _jesus christ it has a tail should I cut it off, should I say something- _

"Hi, I'm Pietro, Magneto's son, how you doing?" Pietro replies amicably. "Hank man, cut the umbilical cord already, would you?"

"How do you know all this?" Hank asks, still frozen in shock. He glances at Magneto, who looks a peculiar shade of green, and then back to Pietro, who's smiling like he sees childbirth all the time, and looks unfazed by the tail situation. Hank has turned away instinctively, holding the baby so that no-one else can see it just yet, but Pietro at least is taking it well.

"I watch a lot of medical dramas," Pietro admits. "So is this little guy my half-sibling so Dad? Pretty soon you'll have an army of children."

"Magneto is not the goddamn father now would someone hand me my baby!" Mystique yells.

Hank hands her the baby, freshly swaddled. He didn't know quite what to do with the tailand leaves it poking out. He did his best.

"My baby has a tail," she says after a moment, a little shocked.

"It's magnificent," Erik says, sounding awe-struck and Hank doesn't think he's joking.

"You," Mystique spits. "Stay away from my child. I don't care how special you think he is. I don't care if he's the greatest mutant to ever mutant. Leave him alone."

Magneto actually has the audacity to look offended, and Charles cuts in, evidently trying to calm things down.

"Okay, how about we get mother and baby to a hospital?" he suggests, somewhat carefully.

"The mother is blue with yellow eyes, and the baby is also blue, and has a tail." Magneto smirks. "What would the humans know about caring for a child like this?"

"The tail," Charles muses. "Surely not…"

"Surely _what _Charles?" Mystique asks.

"The father- the father was Azazel?" the Professor splutters.

"What?" Erik says blankly.

"No way," Alex breathes.

"Who's Azazel?" Pietro asks, and everyone ignores him.

Mystique crosses her arms. "I don't think this is any of your business."

"He has your colour and Azazel's physical characteristics," Hank says, relieved now he knows the tail is _supposed_ to be there. "Genetically, it'll be interesting to see who's mutation he favours."

He doesn't say _I'm sorry Mystique, _because Azazel was experimented on and killed by Trask, and she doesn't say anything about it either. It doesn't seem like the right time to bring that up.

"What's worse, a shapeshifting baby or a teleporting baby?" Alex says, breaking the moment as he wanders out of the room. He comes back in a moment later, carrying a tray with glasses of water. "I thought that everyone should get hydrated," he says, which is Alex for 'I think everyone should calm the fuck down.'

Hank gratefully accepts his glass and downs it in one go. The whole room seems to relax a little, now that the baby is born and they have established the father, and Hank thinks that maybe, just maybe, this will all work out.

Then there's a clap of thunder and for one second Hank thinks that Ororo is having another nightmare upstairs, but the noise seems to come from within the room.

Mystique screams. "My baby just disappeared!"

"No way," Pietro says.

Alex turns to Hank. "Okay, scratch that, teleporting baby is _way _worse."

"Stop standing around and find him," Mystique orders, and they all spread out - save Charles, who doesn't look like he's ever going to let go of Mystique's hand - and begin searching.

Raising a teleporting baby with a devilish-looking tail is going to be hard work, Hank gets that, especially when the baby has no father. But Hank sees Magneto on his hands and knees, peering under the bed and probably _ruining_ his costume. He sees Alex trying to look not to look worried but getting Mystique more water and pillows. He sees Charles holding onto Mystique's hand and calming her down. He even sees Pietro, darting back and forth at top speed trying to find the baby, and Hank realises that it's okay that Azazel isn't around anymore. The baby is going to have enough father-figures as it is.


	2. Chapter 2

I.

To absolutely no-one's surprise, Magneto bails immediately after they locate the baby.  
>"Pietro pulled me from a delicate situation," he explains. "I'll come back tomorrow if I can."<p>

_Literally no-one invited you anyway, _Hank thinks, but that's not exactly true. Pietro had brought him here, and Charles at least was acknowledging Erik's presence. And it was good that Magneto was starting to care, even if that meant even more of his face around these parts.

"You expect me to run you all the way back to your not-so-secret lair?" Pietro asks snarkily. "Can't you fly, or like, get a bus or something? I'm not running a taxi service here."

They bicker like this constantly, and Hank doesn't pay much attention, even though he does notice Erik slyly bribing Pietro. Hank doesn't like to think where Magneto gets money from. It's not like the Brotherhood is a profitable organisation.

The baby-naming discussion that follows in the Lehnsherrs' absence is animated but brief. Everyone offers variants of their own names, from Charlie and Alexander to, well, Hank. "What?" Hank says defensively when everyone stares at him. "There's no variants on Hank. He could be Hank Jr."

No one bothers to volunteer Erik's name - or any variants on it - in his absence, but Peter is brought up as an option, though Hank seriously doubts Mystique is going to name her son after a kid she's just met.

"Seriously good options, all of them," Mystique says, "but I've already decided on Kurt."

"Vonnegut?" Charles had asked with a knowing smile.

"No, because of the teleporting. He's here and gone again. You could say he's _curt._"  
>Hank feels his own jaw drop.<p>

Mystique smiles, and looks around at the blank faces that stare at her. "Get it? Curt?" she says.  
>"No way are you naming your baby after a pun," Alex says, finding his voice first.<p>

Mystique folds her arms and Hank remembers that she was the one who christened Erik 'Magneto', and came up with Darwin, Professor X and Banshee…

In hindsight, the kid's name could have been a whole lot worse.

II.

Pietro comes back an hour or so later from dropping Magneto off, with a backpack that's stuffed to the gunnels, probably with stolen goods if Hank knows Pietro.  
>Hank has made Kurt a makeshift cot at this stage, and the little guy is already asleep inside. Charles has pulled up his wheelchair beside the cot, and he's nodding off too.<p>

Pietro sneaks into the room, holding a finger to his lips. He hands Mystique the backpack quietly. She opens the backpack and there's nappies and wipes and even little baby clothes inside, and she smiles up at him, and he shrugs.

"Thanks," she says and Pietro shushes her. He's obviously trying not to catch Charles' attention, because last time Charles caught him stealing he made Pietro run 50 laps of the track at normal speed, which nearly killed the kid.  
>Pietro's mind may be too quick to read, and Charles is forbidden from reading Mystique's, so Hank knows he's the weak link here. <em>Don't think about the backpack, <em>he thinks, which is an oxymoron in itself. _Don't think about the backpack. _

_You really ought to work on some mental blocks Hank, _Charles' voice says in his head. _You're awful at this. _

Hank frowns, a bit stung by that, and Charles wheels around to face them. Mystique, to her credit, tries to hide the backpack behind her, but it's too late for that.

"Did you pay for any of it?" Charles asks Pietro sternly.

"If I say that I nicked one of dad's cards, does that count as stealing?" Pietro asks, smiling.

"I like this guy already," Mystique says, taking out various stuffed animals from the bag and inspecting them, and Pietro beams at her.

_I built a whole cot you know, _Hank wants to say, but he's too mature for those kind of jabs. If this were a competition though, he thinks he'd be out of the running just because of his general hairiness and blueness, but the sad thing is that Pietro isn't even competing. He's doing this because he's a good kid.

III.

They find a strange rhythm in the days that follow. Hank finds himself teaching every single one of Charles' classes, since Charles flat-out refuses to lose a second with Kurt and Mystique.  
>It's manageable for the first day or two, but Hank ends up in Charles' office on day three, exhaustion getting to him.<p>

"I'm sorry Charles, but the kids are getting sick of me. I don't blame them, I'm a rubbish teacher."

"Nonsense Hank, they actually quite like you," Charles says, rocking Kurt in his arms. He had asked Hank to make him a rocking-chair wheel-chair hybrid, but Hank hadn't gotten around to it yet, not with all the goddamn teaching he was doing. "Still, I understand that it's difficult for you to take this on all at once. I'll talk to some people, try and get someone else to help."

"No offence Charles, but who? What other adult mutants do you know?"

Charles frowns. "There's always Erik," he says after a moment.

"No," Hank says firmly.

"Erik is fluent in six languages and played a huge part in mutant history," Charles argues.

"Erik played the _villainous _role in mutant history Charles," Hank shoots back. "I am not letting him have a position of power over young people."

"Fine," Charles says grumpily. "Who else do we know?"

Hank goes through the list. Emma Frost, dead. Darwin, dead. Sean, dead. Angel, dead. Azazel, dead. Logan, missing, presumed dead. This was turning out to be a more sombre line of thought than Hank had anticipated, and though he doesn't say any of it out loud, Charles is probably picking through his thoughts.

"Alex?" he suggests finally.

Charles grimaces. "Do you think he'll do it?"

Hank shrugs. "It's not like anyone can make Alex do anything, but I'll ask nicely." Charles nods. "I just need a few days with her - with them."

"You deserve a life outside the school too," Hank says quietly. "It's no problem Prof."

Charles nods, though Hank can tell he doesn't quite believe it himself.

"I've done everything I can to find Logan, but he just disappeared that day," Hank adds after a moment.

"God knows what Erik did to him," Charles says darkly. "But he must have survived it, or the timeline would have collapsed."

"Even though you know that Magneto probably did something awful to Logan, you still forgive him?" Hank asks.

Charles looks at him. "People do awful things Hank. Erik does more awful things than most, but then so have I. You learn to move past it."

Hank doesn't know if Charles' own brand of awful - being apathetic for a decade, not acting when he could have - is half as bad as Erik's, but it's not something he wants to argue over.

Kurt wails a little, and Hank rises. "I'll get Mystique."

"Let her rest," Charles says. "Little Kurt here only wants his nappy changed. I'm sure you can take care of that. I suddenly have some very urgent paperwork to do."

"Sure you do," Hank says sarcastically, but takes the baby anyway.

On the way to the newly-made nursery Pietro appears in front of Hank, his brown eyes wide. "I heard Kurt cry, is he okay?"

Hank doesn't know which is more adorable, the little baby in his arms that holds onto tiny fistfuls of his fur like Hank is a giant blue teddy bear, or Pietro's obvious big brother instinct.

"He's fine, he just needs a nappy change. You can do it if you want," he offers, holding the relatively smelly baby out to Pietro.

"I've done a hundred of them already. You guys have got to stop abusing my soft spot for the little guy. It's your turn," Pietro says firmly.

"Fine," Hank concedes, and places Kurt very carefully onto the bed.

"Don't go disappearing on me when I'm changing you," he warns the baby, waggling a finger at him. Kurt looks up at him, all innocence, but Hank knows better. He gets the scissors off the dresser and cuts a little hole in the back of the fresh nappy - space for the tail to go through- and then he takes off the old one, which flops back against the bed, heavy with urine. Hank is just leaning over for the wipes when he feels something warm and wet on his arm, and hears Pietro howling with laughter.

The baby is peeing on his arm.

"Jesus!" Hank says and pulls his hand away, but it's too late, and the fur is wet and that's going to be a pain in the ass to get out.

"You could have pulled him away from me before he did that!" he shouts at Pietro, who's still smirking.

"No way was I running around with a peeing baby with no nappy on!"

The little feud is broken up by a telling thunderclap sound, and Pietro sighs and darts forward to grab Kurt before he teleports, obviously regretting his last sentence.

Only Pietro is fast enough to catch Kurt before he teleports, and it's easy for Pietro to run them both back from wherever Kurt brings them. It's a great system for everyone but Pietro really, but he doesn't seem to mind.  
>Whenever Pietro was sleeping or whatever, then things got tricker. Kurt would bounce from one room to the next without anyone knowing where he'd gone, and everyone ended up baby-searching like headless chickens. Pietro was ditching all of his classes to mind Kurt at this stage- not that Charles could give out to him for that, because he was doing the same thing.<p>

"There we go," Pietro says, appearing back in the room, rocking Kurt on his shoulder. "The little man just wanted to see the garden, that's all."

Hank takes the baby back and finally sticks a nappy on him. Even with all of their combined mutations, minding one baby between them is tough. Hank doesn't know how non-powered parents mind mutant kids, he really doesn't.

IV.

"I can't Hank," Alex is saying.

Hank has seen Alex unfazed in battle, and knows he's survived an actual war, and can't understand why Alex is so torn up about teaching a class.

"Please Alex? I just need an hour's sleep," he says.

Alex looks at the floor and mutters something incoherent.

"Pardon?"

"I said that I didn't graduate high school," Alex says quietly, and Hank gets the feeling that Alex has been avoiding telling him that for a long time. Hank remembers that Alex was in solitary confinement when Charles found him. He wonders what age Alex had got himself locked up at, to protect everyone else. Hank jerks a thumb towards the classroom. "It's not like they've even been to high school," he says, "so don't worry. I swear half of them can't even read. Look, just tell them about Cuba, or Vietnam. You were literally there. Anecdotal evidence and all that."

Alex scowls at the timetable in his hands. "I think this is supposed to be a Mutant Literature class."

"History goes in books, therefore it's literature. You'll be fine."

Alex looks up at him, and he still seems to be on edge but slightly less so than a moment before.

"Thanks Hank," he says, and swallows in a deep breath.

"No problem," Hank says, and watches Alex shuffle into the classroom, and then immediately threaten to stun anyone with his lasers who talked out of turn.

It was a start.

V.

It was the end, and Charles knew it from the very expression on Mystique's face, but he fought against it like a drugged man trying not to succumb to the inevitable sleep.

"Did you really think I was just going to move in?" Mystique says in that cutting way of hers.

"Can you really blame me for hoping, after you turned up here-"

"This doesn't change anything Charles. I'm still the person I was. I'm not content to spend my life in this house."

"But things have changed! You have a _child_ now Mystique, you can't just run off for another few years."

She steps closer to him, furious. "Is that what you think I was doing? Running around on a whim? When I saved Alex from being tortured and killed by Trask, was that not worthwhile, just because I wasn't doing it on your orders?"

"I didn't mean it like that."

She doesn't bother responding, and that's worse than any reply she could have given him.

"Well, Kurt will have the best of care here at least in your absence-"

"He's not staying here," Mystique says, like it's obvious.

Charles feels like he's been slapped. "But, when you brought him here, I presumed-"

"I needed a week to get back on my feet, but that's all this was. I'm not saying this to hurt you Charles, I really am grateful for the welcome you've given me and Kurt here, but this was never going to be long-term, you know that."

"He would have a family here," Charles says softly.

"He always will. But what do any of you know about raising a child?"

_What do you? _Charles thinks, but does not say. Instead he simply says, "We would learn."

"I know you would, but at the end of the day it's my choice."

Charles feels an over-whelming tiredness wash over him, like they are destined to have this fight over and over again. If there's one thing he's learnt over the years it's that Mystique deserves his respect, and deserves the right to make her own decisions. He knows that. He just wishes her choices weren't always so painful.

"As you wish Mystique," he says, letting the formality seep back into his tone. "Kurt will of course be welcome to attend the school when he's of age, and it doesn't need saying that you both are always welcome here before then."

"Thanks Charles," she replies.

There's a silence then, where there's so much he'd still like to say, but words don't quite cover it. He wants to tell her that he still loves her, that she will always be his sister, no matter what she chooses, and that Kurt is his nephew, genetics be damned, but there's no need to say it anyway. She knows it all, and it won't change anything.

"You know," he manages eventually. "A social call would be nice now and then. I know this place is a safe haven of sorts, but don't feel like you can only come in emergencies."

"Imagine what the parents would say if they knew Mystique was invited to Christmas dinner," she says, smiling sadly.

"Erik himself has been invited every year, but he has the convenient excuse of not celebrating Christmas."

"I can't imagine Magneto pulling a cracker with Pietro," she quips.

Charles chuckles. "Nor can I."

Mystique nods almost to herself, and touches Charles on the shoulder lightly.

"Thank you, for everything."

"Anytime," he says, and he means it. Mystique lifts her hand off his shoulder and slings a backpack over her back, and leaves the room, off to take Kurt from the boys. Charles wonders will she tell them what she's going to do, or will she lie to make it easier. At least she hadn't done that to him.  
>He thinks to himself <em>well, we'll see them at Christmas, <em>but somehow he doesn't think that that will happen. Some part of him fears he won't see Mystique and Kurt for a long, long time.


End file.
